


Bruises

by Tattered_Dreams



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: AGAIN - WARNINGS FOR MENTIONS OF VIOLENCE, Alby - Freeform, Assault, Attempted Murder, Bruises, Brutality, Cuts, Gally - Freeform, Gang AU, Gangs, I blame the discord, Injury, M/M, Media studies, Pain, Strangulation, Student AU, Violence, What's new, Wounds, and word wars, based on two pictures, basically nothing, beaten up, but very much a plot point, descriptions of violence, i did not plan to do this, janson - Freeform, janson is corrupt, mentioned only - Freeform, mildly sexual too, minho - Freeform, modern day AU, not graphic I think, this time he runs a police force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 10:30:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15483786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tattered_Dreams/pseuds/Tattered_Dreams
Summary: Thomas has shown up when Newt's studying at the recording studio before, but not quite like this.





	Bruises

**Author's Note:**

> This was an accident. Its a tiny peek of an AU world. Enjoy?
> 
> Please be aware that it does revolve around a violent act and while I don't feel there is explicit/graphic violence, it is discussed. If you're not comfortable with that, there is no obligation to read at all.

“You are here really late.”

 

The voice cracks through the cloaked shadow of the small recording studio with no warning. Newt startles, the world rushing back as his mind quickly catches up with the fact that he’s not alone any more. He jolts upright, his thumb catching on one of the sliders on the control deck as his chair twists away from it.

 

The music pouring gently through the surround system, suffusing the room with a warm, slow ambience makes a swooping sound and then pitches up sharply. It sends a blasting shockwave up Newt’s spine that he should have seen coming a mile off. In the next instant, all the speakers are _screaming_. It’s a blood-curdling high pitched squeal that shreds the air and tears into the shadows.

 

Alby’s pre-recorded voice has warped almost beyond recognition, scraping its way through the speakers in a way that feels tinny and metallic and sharp enough to draw blood. It’s something that might pass for a cat being strangled while singing at the opera with nails on a chalkboard as backing music.

 

Newt grapples to cut it off, wincing at the piercing shriek on his eardrums and wondering how the sound hasn’t shattered the two-way glass of the recording booth.

 

He shoves the slider right back up, pushing past the renewed swooping of the music, through the point where the recorded voice-work sounds natural again. For an instant the lyrics coalesce back into Alby’s familiar baritone, but Newt coasts past it until the panel light goes off. The small grip under his fingers clicks into place and silence crashes down on the room which suddenly seems far smaller without the wails to fill it.

 

Newt sucks in a breath, only then realising he’s gritting his teeth. He forces his jaw to relax, lets out a sigh and uses his legs, straddled loosely either side of the chair he’s been slouched backwards on, to kick it around and face the doorway.

 

His heart lurches when he sets his eyes on the shadowed figure leaning against the frame, even though he’d already recognised the voice.

 

Thomas is back.

 

Newt isn’t sure exactly when Thomas started showing up in his life, he just knows he doesn’t really remember a time when he wasn’t there and he doesn’t particularly want to go back to whatever that might have been. Thomas is strange to him; a controversy folded into human form. He possesses an entrancing kind of ease inside his own skin, a confidence that no one seems able to shake but it goes hand in hand with a quietness, at moments bashful, that’s equally fascinating.

 

“Which means you’re here late, too,” Newt points out, raising an eyebrow. “Does the Gang know where you come to every Friday night?”

 

Thomas exhales a soft, ironic laugh. “Does it matter?”

 

Newt tilts his head, considering that for a second. Honestly, no.

 

Thomas has been in the street gang of Maze City since Newt moved there three years ago. The police force has been corrupt since Sheriff Janson took over and the Gang slowly began to form in the wake of the election, dedicating themselves to helping to stop petty crime if they could. There’s been a lot of speculation by people older and more connected than them – a bunch of mostly college students – that Mayor Paige is actually part of the corruption. But as usual with such cliches, there’s no evidence to prove it.

 

And sure, Thomas may not have to report in everything he does to the other boys he runs with, but a Friday night is usually a lively one in the City, and instead, Thomas has been with him.

 

Someone, eventually, is bound to notice.

 

There’s no real leader between them, but Newt does figure that if anyone has a problem with it, it would be Gally. He is one of the gang’s original members, as far as Newt has worked out, and he takes their code very nearly as seriously as he takes their safety.

 

He’s a tall boy with a powerful, rangy build and has eyebrows so severely angled that he looks pissed off even if he’s smiling at the same time. Newt knows him in the way he knows people in his media studies class; you recognise their faces, you’ve heard them speak, could probably describe them to a police officer if they went missing, but otherwise they don’t cross paths. Newt knows of him because Gally has scowled at him no less than twelve times in the past three months alone.

 

His eyebrows look more impressive when he’s scowling.

 

“No,” Newt finally says, tipping his weight and twisting the chair back around to the console. “It doesn’t matter. Just curious how Gally would take it.”

 

It really is late; much later than he planned to be here. He just got caught up with checking the new recording and playing with some of the backing tracks and it’s somehow gone ten at night. But now the music is silent and the clock on the wall, half hidden in shadow despite the stark white face, ticks mordantly past the hour like its calling him out.

 

He grabs the loose music sheets from the edge of the desk, and picks up his phone – its time to go – and that’s when he hears the low sigh from behind him.

 

“Well enough,” Thomas says, in a strangely contemplative tone.

 

Newt frowns, twisting in the chair and finds him still hovering in the doorway with the pitch black of the hall stretching beyond. Thomas shifts carefully, with something like consideration more than hesitation, and then steps forward. The dim light over the control deck falls across him, cuts him out of the shadows.

 

Newt sucks in a sharp breath and it stabs cruelly between his ribs.

 

“Who did that to you?”

 

He almost doesn’t recognise his own voice; the way it comes out like the crack of a whip, angry and stricken. Horror turns cold in his veins, like dry ice, turning him brittle from the inside out.

 

Thomas has taken a beating.

 

His hair is a mess and there’s a vicious scrape over his cheekbone, the skin already discoloured. There’s a different bruise over the corner of his mouth, his lower lip has been split and a clean cut runs the length of his neck. It slices down almost vertically, just curving around the ridge of his collarbone like the person who did it allowed the bone to kick the blade. His throat is a riot of colourful bruising underneath it, stark and violent reds and greens punctuated with the unmistakable imprints of hands that stand out blue.

 

He’s holding a wooden baseball bat between his fingers, loosely, delicately almost, but his knuckles are swollen, cut up, brutalised.

 

Whoever did this to him, he had a good go back.

 

Newt isn’t sure if he’s concerned about that or not. The Thomas he knows wouldn’t hurt someone unless he was pushed. His moral compass is a unique thing, difficult to influence any one way, but with a deceptive intricacy. He’s such a good person; one of the best Newt’s ever known. If he’s done this to his hands; if he looks like this at all…

 

Cold fury shoots down Newt’s spine and he feels bolted to the seat as it sways between his legs, his arm locked on the back. The shock of seeing it is slowly, slowly fading, solidifying into this icy anger that’s freezing in his bloodstream, stinging in his head. Its an instinctive, helpless kind of rage, and that he doesn’t know what to do with it.

 

Someone went after Thomas.

 

“Who did it?” he asks again. “It wasn’t-“

 

He knows it wasn’t Gally. For all the scowling and ability to look like he could literally throw your own car at you, Newt has only ever heard good things about him. He takes threats to the Gang very seriously and would never be the one to hurt them in any way if he could help it, no matter how angry he might get.

 

In fact, if Gally has any idea this happened, he probably took off to hurt the person who did it.

 

But Newt also knows enough by now to know that clarifying this first – that he knows the Gang didn’t do this to him for...what? Taking Friday nights off? - will help Thomas to shake free of his own headspace.

 

Predictably, Thomas’ head snaps up. A wince passes through his expression at the sharp movement – probably at the way it tugs at the wound on his neck – but his expression is steady, eyes intent.

 

“Gally?” he finishes, just to say it, even though it was him Newt brought up first. “No. It wasn’t. This was just…Janson’s force.”

 

The Sheriff is, unfortunately, smarter than they’d like. He employs people on the sly to do his dirty work and so far, there’s been no way to trace back any of these attacks on the Gang to him. He knows how to cover a paper trail, he knows who to talk to, how to manipulate so even the ones not in his pocket won’t talk. And it probably helps that he has the Mayor behind him, too. They all know; but no one can prove anything.

 

“Shit, Tommy,” Newt exhales. He vaguely feels the music sheets slide off his leg and onto the floor, skidding on the air under the edge of the desk. He doesn’t care. In the same instant he’s climbing up, kicking the chair away and tossing his phone back onto the desk.

 

He doesn’t even pause to consider that this is the first time that the nickname has survived the filter usually between his brain and his mouth. He’s held it back before; a lot more than perhaps he’d like to admit to himself, but not this time. That’s not a priority right now and maybe he was fed up of reminding himself not to say it anyway.

 

“Its fine,” Thomas says, his voice catching as he forces the words out through damaged chords. He shrugs even as he winces again when Newt strides towards him. “It’s been worse.”

 

_Worse?_

 

Newt hopes in that moment he looks as angry as he feels when he levels Thomas with a glare, meeting him in the doorway.

 

“That does _not_ make this okay. Sit down. I’ll get the first aid kit.”

 

Thomas is already opening his mouth to protest. “I’ll clean up at home,” he says. “Newt. I’m fine.”

 

Newt, frankly, disagrees, but he also knows that Thomas is difficult to sway at the best of times.

 

“What happened?” he tries instead.

 

Thomas’ gaze flinches away from his, eyes skipping across the dark carpet. “Tried to kill me, I guess.”

 

“You guess,” Newt scoffs. “Because it wasn’t clear or anything.”

 

Thomas shakes his head, for the first time that evening, true mirth flickers through his eyes, chasing just a little of the gaunt shadows away.

 

He’s not fine. Newt knew that.

 

“Sit down,” he tells Thomas again. This time, Newt gently, slowly reaches out and curls his fingers around the bat, taking it. Thomas tilts his head; the cut along his neck is red and new in the limited light, the bruises on his throat vicious. Hate spirals down Newt’s nerves crackling and stinging.

 

With that moment, though, Thomas nods quietly, almost to himself, and then slides around him in the small space to take the seat Newt just abandoned.

 

“ Happy?” he asks, a touch acerbic even as his voice croaks, and a smile pulls at his mouth.

 

“ Ecstatic,” Newt agrees entirely deadpan. “Stay put. And don’t talk either; you’ll make that worse.”

 

Thomas gives him a look that is a strangely heated mix of entirely caught off guard, pleased and suggestive. “What? Are you going to gag me too?”

 

Newt heads off down the hall without dignifying that with a reply.

 

He doesn’t blame Thomas as such; He was attacked, and gave back decently too, if his hands are any indication. Newt hasn’t seen him this bad in all the time since they met, but he has seen him on nights after the Gang break up a fight or the rare occasions they start one. It’s an adrenaline rush for them, a flood of dopamine and cortisol through the bloodstream.

 

For Thomas, something about him gets edgier, darke r, more volatile. He’s  more impenetrable than the person Newt first knew  in those moments, but just as much of a controversy; vulnerability clinging to his frayed edges even as everything about him becomes guarded . His tongue is sharper; his usual touch of sarcasm turns knife-like, verges on reckless. He lets his mouth move first, using words as an outlet for the leftover rush.

 

Newt has seen this before. He’s just….never quite seen it directed at him in this way.

 

It’s distracting.

 

He can’t let go of that image; Thomas beaten and bruised and slouched back  in the seat , tongue flicking across the split of his lip and his eyes dark against the purpling contrast of his skin. It doesn’t help at all that Newt has always found that chair more comfortable to sit in backwards, which is what he’s been doing for hours.  This is an image that comes even easier. Too easily, perhaps. And seeing it; sinking back down to the seat, but  Thomas  still there,  pliant underneath hi m is…

 

Distracting.

 

He blames that for why it takes precious more minutes for him to actually get the first aid kit from the tiny bathroom in the media block. He especially blames it for when he spots the abandoned pack of cable ties left by the sink from when the plumbing was worked on last week and snatches those too.

 

Thomas’ head snaps up the second Newt tosses the bag into his lap.

 

“ Keeping you in the chair should be easy enough if you can’t do it on your own,” Newt says, carefully casual even though he can feel his own heartbeat hammering in his chest and pulsing in the tips of his fingers.

 

The frozen moment of shock on Thomas’ face is worth it, before it melts, slides into something heated and purposeful. And that is perhaps even more worth it, even if it was intended – mostly intended – as a joke.

 

The darkness of the room seems to fold in on them, heavier and thicker as Newt feels his temperature stab up, the collar of his shirt scratching at the nape of his neck. He’s more aware than ever of just how late it is.

 

He’s always wanted to play this line with Thomas, he was just never quite sure if it would be wanted, if he was alone in it… but Thomas started this. And sure, he’s probably going to hell for taking advantage of Thomas’ post-fight lack of a filter but he doesn’t think anyone will blame him. Thomas least of all.  Newt’s seen it, tempered it before.  Thomas lacks a filter; he’s not completely blazed with no idea what he’s doing.

 

Thomas swallows slowly, the movement working his throat. It looks painful; the dappled pattern of bruises in his skin shifting and the cut in his neck like a cruel tattoo. When he speaks, his voice is a damaged rasp laced with intent. “If you wanted me to stay in the chair, there are easier ways than tying me down.”

 

Newt bites on his tongue, and barely manages not to shudder as the words shred down his spine, white hot.

 

The sudden image of it invades his mind; like the thought from before but this time Thomas led him there purposely. And its a heady image; crossing the room and sinking back into the chair, straddling Thomas , rocking down with his hips to properly lock him in place . Maybe Newt could restrain his wrists, just a little, leaning into him until their combined weight forces the spring-loaded back piece to give-

 

“ Maybe later,” Newt manages, forcing that thought aside. He’ll handle that… later. This isn’t the time. Instead he throws the first aid kit box across the room and Thomas snatches it out of the air one handed, never once looking away from Newt.

 

“ You’re not going to play nurse then?” he asks glibly, already balancing it on his leg and cracking open the seal. He pulls out antiseptic and gauze.

 

“ You’re not going to tell me what actually happened, then?” Newt fires back. He folds his arms, leaning back against the door-jamb where Thomas had first appeared.

 

Thomas sighs. His movements with the medical supplies are practiced; more so than they should have any right to be. He’s used to patching himself up. The stilted stiffness isn’t lack of knowledge; it’s entirely down to the crusted blood still on his hands.

 

“ It’s not important,” Thomas mutters, pressing carefully at the scrape on his cheekbone with the antiseptic pad and hissing between his teeth as it stings.

 

“ Not important,” Newt repeats darkly. “I don’t know where you were the day they told you that it’s kind of a big deal to try strangling someone in a parking lot but-“

 

“ It wasn’t a parking lot.”

 

Newt rakes his hands through his hair, irrational anger snapping through his veins.

 

_ Scared _ . He’s scared. Thomas could have been killed tonight, wherever he was, and Newt wouldn’t have known. Even if the Gang knew or suspected anything, they wouldn’t have told Newt. They don’t know – Newt thinks – that Thomas comes to see him.

 

It’s strange because this is all he and Thomas have ever been; a friendship that exists between shadows, the tiny spaces that their lives overlap – spaces that have been growing, nurtured,  as they’ve fought for  more time. Its at once easy and charged. Effortless and grounding  and  an adrenaline rush.

 

But Newt could have lost it, and it’s a terrifying thought.

 

“ That’s not even the point and you kn-“

 

“ It’s not important because the more I tell you the more it puts you in danger,” Thomas cuts. “I don’t want that, Newt.”

 

“And you think I want _you_ in danger?”

 

Thomas pauses in his efforts to tend his injuries. His eyes are steady, even as his hands lower, fingers soft on the blood-stained gauze. He toys with it and his eyebrow lifts. “I’m not sure I know what you want,” he breathes like it’s a dare.

 

The sparking anger and hot frustration crackling under Newt’s skin sputters out. He deflates into the door frame until the catch is digging into the small of his back.  The faint bite is grounding and welcome.  Something else takes  the place of all the aggravation ; something dark and weightless and beckoning that feels like a drug in his bloodstream.

 

Newt pulls himself off the door in the next instant.

 

He grabs a spare chair and plants it down opposite Thomas, his heart jack-knifing in his chest with the way Thomas’ hands just barely shake. Surprise, anticipation, adrenaline, stress, apprehension. There are too many things it could be, and its most likely a combination of most of them. Newt isn’t fond of it regardless of its cause. Thomas is in constant motion, that may be true, but its different when he’s fidgeting because he simply burns too bright to contain it inside himself compared to these tremors that are only because he’s been attacked.

 

Newt sits on the edge of the seat, takes the gauze and then – with only a fleeting glance up – takes Thomas’ fingers, drawing them towards himself.

 

He keeps his eyes purposely on the task of disinfecting the broken skin over Thomas’ knuckles, cleaning away the dried blood so he can see properly to assess the damage. Nothing is broken, which should be a minor miracle, but Newt also knows that Thomas is good at throwing a punch when it’s called for. The skin is split open but the wounds are relatively easy to clean out. This isn’t like the one time Newt watched Thomas clean out similar wounds in the bathroom sink just down the hall and saw flaked blood and ugly grit wash down the drain. He’d punched a wall that time.

 

This time he’s done the damage on soft tissue. His attacker.

 

“ You’ll need to wrap these up,” Newt tells him softly, barely a murmur that’s almost swallowed by the lateness of the night. “Keep them clean, let them heal.”

 

He knows he doesn’t really need to tell Thomas any of this. He knows it all, is used to it, more than he should be. But saying it, letting the words spill into the small, careful space between them is soothing somehow.

 

Newt lifts his head.

 

Thomas is watching him with quiet, still intensity, curled forwards on the chair, his fingers still resting in Newt’s. His split lip is swollen, the mark on his cheekbone clean but bruising with each passing moment and the handprints around his neck tell the story of his attempted murder.

 

Some time ago Newt might have believed murder to be far-fetched. Over-dramatic; an exaggeration of the severity the Gang faced. But he’s learned better. Janson hates interference and scrutiny, for good reason. And kids from the Gang haven’t come back before.

 

Thomas told him one night of an older boy called Nick who was missing for six weeks before his body was found out of state. There were two more after him who are still just missing.

 

Their families still don’t have answers.

 

 

 

“ I don’t want you in danger,” Newt whispers to him finally. “I don’t want to not know if you’re okay, or if anything’s happened to you and I don’t want to have to go to Gally of all people to find out if you’ve been killed, okay?”

 

“ That’s what you don’t want,” Thomas points out slowly. His voice is even rougher, failing him. His fingers shift, and for a second, Newt thinks he’s taking them back – but instead, Thomas tangles them together with Newt’s ow n.  His heart might have just turned over.

 

“What about what you _do_ want.”

 

Newt sucks in a breath.

 

So far, even if Thomas has the luxury of blaming an adrenaline rush, he’s been the one to push this. Maybe it’s fair that Newt is honest with him right now.

 

But he isn’t sure how to start. There are so many things he wants but he isn’t sure that Thomas is ready to hear them. Playing along with a bit of suggestive joking is one thing. This is different. This is bigger.

 

Newt doesn’t want to change Thomas; this person who so easily lives inside his own skin whether its mapped only with his unique scatter of moles or whether its mapped by brutality. The Thomas he first met is the one he wants.

 

Newt bites it back, focuses on the way his fingers are laced between Thomas’ and how that makes his heart twist behind his ribs.

 

This started with him being in danger; he’s going to keep it there. For now.

 

“ I want you to be safe, however you can be,”  Newt says, keeping his voice low but as serious as he can make it. “To have somewhere or someone to go back to – wherever or whoever that is – even if you can’t tell m-”

 

Thomas makes a strange sound in the back of his throat and Newt stops talking. It must have hurt, but the wince of pain in Thomas’ expression is fleeting, quickly pushed away in favour of a quiet look of awe, something like gravity in the ochre of his eyes. He tugs on their clasped hands, drawing them into the space between his knees and Newt leans in to keep his elbows bent.

 

“Even if I can’t tell you,” Thomas repeats in a murmur, wonder and amusement catching in the husky scratch of his voice. “Newt….you _are_ my safe space.”

 

Newt freezes, feels his jaw drop, feels his heart stop and all the synapses firing around in his brain slow to a standstill. He’s acutely aware of the clock ticking as loud as a drumbeat on the wall, of Thomas’ thumbs pressed into his wrists and of where his knee rests against the inside of Thomas’ leg.

 

It feels like trying to choke down a brick, but Newt swallows. His skin feels electrified under the brush of fibres from his clothes. Its mildly surprising he hasn’t caught on fire or passed out.

 

Thomas’ expression is soft, just a little hesitant, but bold certainty colours his eyes.

 

“ I don’t mean because you’re outside of my life, or because I’m using you for an escape, or because-“

 

“That’s what you don’t mean,” Newt points out. This...this is familiar ground. He’s unable to help the mischief as he feels himself start to smile, surprise running headlong into heady elation, heart hammering inside the cage of his ribs like a frantic bird. “What about what you _do_ mean.”

 

Thomas stalls, jaw loose, his gaze startled and burning. His tongue flicks across the seam of his mouth, curling at the corner as he contemplates the answer and Newt definitely, definitely doesn’t track the slow movement of it.

 

“ I mean,” Thomas says now, still with those slow, purposeful words, though there’s vulnerability in the curve of his shoulders and the softness of his features. His eyes glow softly  and he’s haloed  in the dim lighting that casts down from behind him.  There’s something painfully beautiful about it; artistic. The shadows and glowing light and the dapple of bruises are somehow reflective of the contradictory personality that lives like a storm inside his skin. His expression is still so certain as he finishes,  “You are always who I want to come back to.”

 

 

 

It’s never felt like the time, like something he can risk, but right now it does. Right now, with Thomas’ fingers still laced between his own, the darkness of the late hour a blanket around them and this whisper curling through the air between them…

 

It feels worth it. It feels like something, a moment, a chance he’ll regret giving up.

 

“ Good,” Newt says, swallowing firmly past the hitch of breath in his lungs as he leans closer, makes sure Thomas is listening. “I always want you to come back to me, too, so stay alive.”

 

Thomas, eyes locked on his, nods hurriedly and Newt surges across the remaining inches of space to kiss him.

 

 

 

Thomas makes a sound somewhere between a moan and a sob, his mouth soft, opening under Newt’s, and it feels real, hard won, vividly alive. Newt presses closer, his heart racing in his chest; relief and wanting and thrill sliding through his veins with each pulse. He unlinks one of their hands so that he can tuck his fingers behind Thomas’ knee and tug him forwards. The chair skids. Thomas’ free hand grips at the collar of Newt’s shirt, fingers twisting until the fabric pulls at the back of his neck.

 

Newt feels distantly light-headed. He sucks gently at Thomas’ tongue and then draws his own over the roof of Thomas’ mouth, pulling a whimper from the back of his throat.

 

He tastes like sugar, like the world after rain, like spearmint and charcoal. He tastes like the faint tang of copper.

 

Newt draws back quickly. It was meant to be short; a second of bravery, a second of weakness, but he’s still acutely aware that Thomas is hurt, probably more than he’s willing to admit. This – now that it’s said, now that it’s started – can wait.

 

Thomas seems to disagree.

 

“ Mm, no,” he mutters, coasting the chair closer until the wheel base crashes into the leg of Newt’s seat. “C’mere.”

 

Newt gives in again, just for a second, as Thomas’ hand slides around his neck, fingers spearing through his hair and fixing him in place to crush their mouths back together. Newt sighs into him, his heart beating loud in his ears, and the inside of his wrist where Thomas’ thumb rubs over the blue veins traced there where the skin is soft, almost translucent. Its almost as literal as a heart on his sleeve.

 

Thomas kisses the same way he exists; ease and energy tangled up with intent and mischief, coloured with the edge of something wild.

 

Newt isn’t sure how he got this; how it started, or when things started to change, but he knows he can’t – won’t – lose it.

 

Thomas’ teeth scrape over his lip, tongue curling to soothe the sting and a bolt of heavy yearning ricochets down Newt’s spine. His fingers squeeze around Thomas’ reflexively and brush over damaged skin.

 

Thomas doesn’t even appear to notice but Newt breaks the kiss again.

 

“ Tommy,” he breathes, the second slip of the name, a touch of a warning forced through the breathlessness as Thomas tips back towards him.

 

Thomas groans quietly, dropping his forehead onto Newt’s as he gives in, thumb rubbing into the folds of denim on the inside of Newt’s knee. Newt feels his body run hot, a warm weight dropping into his stomach in a way that’s contented more than anything else. The idea that after all the months of being careful, it could be this easy, that he could actually get to have it, to keep it, seems wild and impossible and yet he’s breathing it in right now.

 

“ Maybe later?” Thomas asks, and this time the words are barely distinguishable from the rough, ripped noise that’s been worsening in his throat. Still, somehow he sounds both amused and hopeful as he takes Newt’s earlier comment and turns it on him.

 

Mirth twists with yearning in Newt’s bloodstream and the dark room feels like it’s full of sunlight.

 

“ Definitely later,” he corrects. “When you’ve healed.”

 

Thomas’ eyes narrow, but he wisely says nothing.

 

Newt bites on his tongue, quickly trying to think back to what his dorm-mate said about his weekend plans. He thinks he’s in the clear, pretty sure Minho said something about being away until his first class on Monday evening. Nodding to himself, he pushes his chair back, detangling himself from Thomas and getting up to grab his things again.

 

“ Get your bat,” Newt says over his shoulder, stuffing his phone into his bag. “We have to get out of here and the sooner  we get back to the dorm, the sooner we can find some ice.”

 

“ We?” Thomas croaks, startled.

 

Newt  r evel s just a little in catching Thomas truly out. They’ve never gone back to the dorms before. Its just….never come up. They’ve always met here, the library, various, quiet, hole in the wall cafes or the student bars in the city.

 

The nature of their friendship has always been to keep it to the shadows, keep it quiet. Thomas has always been concerned about protecting Newt’s connection to him, about the dangers it involves. Newt has always wanted to protect Thomas in exchange, as best he can, and that’s included keeping everything about their friendship from Minho and the rest of the dorm block.

 

But right now, Newt could care less.

 

This is happening. Thomas needs to be somewhere safe.

 

When Newt turns back, eyebrow raised, he finds Thomas holding out  the music sheets  Newt had completely forgotten about.  He must have ducked under the edge of the desk for them but Newt doesn’t ask, just takes them, tucking them into the bag as well.

 

“ We,” he nods, smirk tugging at his mouth. “Safe place, remember? Unless you particularly object, my dorm-mate is out. Janson’s dogs will still be looking for you and you agreed to stay alive.”

 

“ No objections,” Thomas mouths with a shrug and a nod of easy agreement. He turns the chair he took  and pushes it  back under the control desk and then stoops to pick up the wooden bat from where Newt leaned it against the trash can.

 

“ Good that,” Newt says, hitting the lights and plunging them into total darkness. He reaches out to where Thomas was last stood, finding his wrist easily and lacing their fingers back together to lead him to the exit.

 

“ By the way; text Gally and tell him you’ll be unreachable all weekend.”

**Author's Note:**

> So. That happened.


End file.
